A CHINESE LIBRARY

The endowment of a Chinese chair at Columbia University naturally
suggests the acquisition of a good Chinese library. At the University
of Cambridge, England, there is what I can only characterise as an
ideal Chinese library. It was not bought off-hand in the market, 
such a collection indeed would never come into the market,  but the
books were patiently and carefully brought together by my predecessor
in the Chinese chair during a period of over forty years residence in
China. The result is an admirable selection of representative works,
always in good, and sometimes in rare, editions, covering the whole
field of what is most valuable in Chinese literature.

I now propose, with your approval, to give a slight sketch of the
Cambridge Library, in which I spend a portion of almost every day of
my life, and which I further venture to recommend as the type of that
collection which Columbia University should endeavour to place upon
her shelves.

The Chinese library at Cambridge consists of 4304 volumes, roughly
distributed under seven heads. These volumes, it should be stated, are
not the usual thin, paper-covered volumes of an ordinary Chinese work,
but they consist each of several of the original Chinese volumes bound
together in cloth or leather, lettered on the back, and standing on
the shelves, as our books do, instead of lying flat, as is the custom
in China.

Division A contains, first of all, the Confucian Canon [2],
which now
consists of nine separate works.

There is the mystic Book of Changes[3], that is to say,
the eight
changes or combinations which can be produced by a line and a broken
line, either one of which is repeated twice with the other, or three
times by itself.

- - - -
- - - - etc.
- - - -

These trigrams are said to have been copied from the back of a
tortoise by an ancient monarch, who doubled them into hexagrams, and
so increased the combinations to sixty-four, each one of which
represents some active or passive power in nature.

Confucius said that if he could devote fifty years to the study of
this work, he might come to be without great faults; but neither
native nor foreign scholars can really make anything out of it. Some
regard it as a Book of Fate. One erratic genius of the West has gone
so far as to say that it is only a vocabulary of the language of some
old Central Asian tribe.

We are on somewhat firmer ground with the Book of History[4],
which is a collection of very ancient historical documents, going back
twenty centuries B.C., arranged and edited by Confucius. These
documents, mere fragments as they are, give us glimpses of Chinas
early civilisation, centuries before the historical period, to which
we shall come later on, can fairly be said to begin.

Then we have the Book of Odes[5], consisting of some
three
hundred ballads, also rescued by Confucius from oblivion, on which as
a basis the great superstructure of modern Chinese poetry has been
raised.

Next comes an historical work by Confucius, known as the Spring and
Autumn[6]: it should be Springs and Autumns, for the title
refers to
the yearly records, to the annals, in fact, of the native State of
Confucius himself.

The fifth in the series is the Book of Rites[7]. This
deals, as
its title indicates, with ceremonial, and contains an infinite number
of rules for the guidance of personal conduct under a variety of
conditions and circumstances. It was compiled at a comparatively late
date, the close of the second century B.C., and scarcely ranks in
authority with the other four.

The above are called the Five Classics; they were for many centuries
six in number, a Book of Music being included, and they were
engraved on forty-six huge stone tablets about the year 170 A.D. Only
mutilated portions of these tablets still remain.

The other four works which make up the Confucian Canon are known as
the Four Books. They consist of a short moral treatise entitled the
Great Learning[8], or Learning for Adults; the
Doctrine of the
Mean[9], another short philosophical treatise; the
Analects[10],
or conversations of Confucius with his disciples, and other details of
the sages daily life; and lastly, similar conversations of
Mencius [11]
with his disciples and with various feudal nobles who sought his
advice.

These nine works are practically learned by heart by the Chinese
undergraduate. But there are in addition many commentaries and
exegetical works  the best of which stand in the Cambridge Library
 designed to elucidate the true purport of the Canon; and these must
also be studied. They range from the commentary of Kung An-kuo [12] of
the second century B.C., a descendant of Confucius in the twelfth
degree, down to that of Yüan Yüan [13], a well-known scholar
who only died
so recently as 1849. These commentaries include both of the two great
schools of interpretation, the earlier of which was accepted until the
twelfth century A.D., when it was set aside by Chinas most brilliant
scholar, Chu Hsi, who substituted the interpretation still in vogue,
and obligatory at the public competitive examinations which admit to
an official career.

Archæological works referring to the Canon have been published in
great numbers. The very first book in our Catalogue [14] is an
account of
every article mentioned in these old records, accompanied in all cases
by woodcuts. Thus the foreign student may see not only the robes and
caps in which ancient worthies of the Confucian epoch appeared, but
their chariots, their banners, their weapons, and general
paraphernalia of everyday life.

Side by side with the sacred books of Confucianism stand the heterodox
writings of the Taoist philosophers, the nominal founder of which
school, known as Lao Tzu, flourished at an unknown date before
Confucius. Some of these are deeply interesting; others have not
escaped the suspicion of forgery  a suspicion which attaches more or
less to any works produced before the famous Burning of the Books, in
B.C. 211, from which the Confucian Canon was preserved almost by a
miracle. An Emperor at that date made an attempt to destroy all
literature, so that a fresh start might be made from himself.

But I do not intend to detain you at present over Taoism, about which
I hope to say more on a subsequent occasion. Still less shall I have
anything to say on the few Buddhist works which are also to be found
in the Cambridge collection. It is rather along less well-beaten paths
that I shall ask you to accompany me now.

In Division B, the first thing which catches the eye is a long line of
217 thick volumes, about a foot in height. These are the dynastic
histories of China, in a uniform edition published in the
year 1747,
under the auspices of the famous Emperor Chien Lung, who himself
contributed a Preface. [15]

The first of this series, known as The Historical Record[16], was
produced by a very remarkable man, named Ssu-ma Chien, sometimes
called the Father of History, the Herodotus of China, who died nearly
one hundred years B.C.; and over his most notable work it may not be
unprofitable to linger awhile.

Starting with the five legendary Emperors, some 2700 years B.C., the
historian begins by giving the annals of each reign under the various
more or less legendary dynasties which succeeded, and thence onward
right down to his own times, the last five or six hundred years,
i.e. from about 700 B.C., belonging to a genuinely historical
period. These annals form Part I of the five parts into which the
historian divides his scheme.

Part II is occupied by chronological tables of the Emperors and their
reigns, of the suzerains and vassal nobles under the feudal system
which was introduced about 1100 B.C., and also of the nobles created
to form an aristocracy after the feudal system had been swept away and
replaced by the old Imperial rule, about 200 B.C.

Part III consists of eight important and interesting chapters: (1) on
the Rites and Ceremonies of the period covered, (2) on Music, (3) on
the Pitch-pipes, a series of twelve bamboo tubes of varying lengths,
the notes from which were supposed to be bound up in some mysterious
way with the good and bad fortunes of mankind, (4) on the Calendar,
(5) on the Stars, (6) on the Imperial Sacrifices to Heaven and Earth,
(7) on the Waterways of the Empire, and lastly (8) on Commerce,
Coinage, etc.

Part IV deals with the reigns, so to speak, of the vassal nobles under
the feudal system, the reigns of the suzerains having been already
included in Part I.

Part V consists of biographies of the most eminent men who came to the
front during the whole period covered.

These biographies are by no means confined to virtuous statesmen or
heroic generals, as we might very reasonably have expected. The
Chinese historian took a much broader view of his responsibilities to
future ages, and along with the above virtuous statesmen and heroic
generals he included lives of famous assassins, of tyrannical
officials, of courtiers, of flatterers, of men with nothing beyond the
gift of the gab, of politicians, of fortune-tellers, and the like.

This principle seems now to be widely recognised in the compilation of
biographical collections. It was initiated by a Chinese historian one
hundred years B.C.

His great work has come down to us as near as possible intact. To the
Chinese it is, and always has been, a priceless treasure; so much so
that every succeeding Dynastic History has been modelled pretty much
upon the same lines.

The custom has always been for the incoming dynasty to issue the
history of the dynasty it has overthrown, based upon materials which
have been gathered daily during the latters lease of power. At this
moment the Historiographers Department in Peking should be noting
down current events for the use of posterity, in the established
belief that all dynasties, even the most powerful, come to an end some
day.

In addition to the Dynastic History proper, a custom has grown up of
compiling what is called the Veritable Record of the life of the
reigning Emperor. This is supposed to be written up every day, and
with an absolute fidelity which it is unnecessary to suspect, since
the Emperors are never allowed under any circumstances to cast an eye
over their own records.

When the Hanlin College was burnt down, in 1900, some said that the
Veritable Records of the present dynasty were destroyed. Others
alleged that they had been carted away several days
previously. However this may be, the Veritable Records of the great
Ming dynasty, which came to a close in 1644, after three hundred years
of power, are safe in Division B of the Cambridge Library, filling
eighty-four large volumes of manuscript. [17]

The next historical epoch is that of Ssu-ma Kuang, a leading statesman
and scholar of the eleventh century A.D., who, after nineteen years of
continuous labour, produced a general history of China, in the form of
a chronological narrative, beginning with the fourth century B.C. and
ending with the middle of the tenth century A.D. This work, which is
popularly known as The Mirror of History, and is
quite
independent of the dynastic histories, fills thirty-three of our large
bound-up volumes. [18]

There is a quaint passage in the old mans Preface, dated 1084, and
addressed to the Emperor: 

Your servants physical strength is now relaxed; his eyes are
short-sighted and dim; of his teeth but a few remain. His memory is so
impaired that the events of the moment are forgotten as he turns away
from them, his energies having been wholly exhausted in the production
of this book. He therefore hopes that your Majesty will pardon his
vain attempt for the sake of his loyal intention, and in moments of
leisure will deign to cast the Sacred Glance over this work, so as to
learn from the rise and fall of former dynasties the secret of the
successes and failures of the present hour. Then, if such knowledge
shall be applied for the advantage of the Empire, even though your
servant may lay his bones in the Yellow Springs, the aim and ambition
of his life will be fulfilled. [19]

Biography, as we have already seen, is to some extent provided for
under the dynastic histories. Its scope, however, has been limited in
later times, so far as the Historiographers Department is concerned,
to such officials as have been named by Imperial edict for inclusion
in the national records. Consequently, there has always been a vast
output of private biographical literature, dealing with the lives of
poets, painters, priests, hermits, villains, and others, whose good
and evil deeds would have been long since forgotten, like those of the
heroes before Agamemnon, but for the care of some enthusiastic
biographer.

Among our eight or ten collections of this kind, there is one which
deserves a special notice. This work is entitled Biographies of
Eminent Women, and it fills four extra-large volumes,
containing
310 lives in all. [20] The idea of thus immortalising the most deserving of
his countrywomen first occurred to a writer named Liu Hsiang [21], who
flourished just before the Christian era. I am not aware that his
original work is still procurable; the present work was based upon one
by another writer, of the third century A.D., and is brought down to
modern times, being published in 1779. Each biography is accompanied
by a full-page illustration of some scene in which the lady
distinguished herself,  all from the pencil of a well-known artist.

Three good-sized encyclopædias [22], uniformly bound up in
ninety-eight
large volumes, may fairly claim a moments notice, not only as
evidencing the persistent literary industry of the Chinese, but
because they are all three perfect mines of information on subjects of
interest to the foreign student.

The first [23] dates from the very beginning of the ninth
century, and
deals chiefly with the Administration of Government, Political
Economy, and National Defences, besides Rites, Music, and subordinate
questions.

The second [24] dates from the twelfth century, and deals with
the same
subjects, having additional sections on History and Chronology,
Writing, Pronunciation, Astronomy, Bibliography, Prodigies, Fauna and
Flora, Foreign Nations, etc.

The third [25], and best known to foreign scholars, is the
encyclopædia of
Ma Tuan-lin of the fourteenth century. It is on much the same lines as
the other two, being actually based upon the first, but has of course
the advantage of being some centuries later.

The above three works are in a uniform edition, published in the
middle of the eighteenth century under orders from the Emperor Chien
Lung.

There are also several other encyclopædias of information on general
topics, extending to a good many volumes in each case.

One of these contains interesting extracts on all manner
of subjects
taken from the lighter literature of China, such as Dreams, Palmistry,
Reminiscences of a Previous State of Existence, and even Resurrection
after Death. It was cut on blocks for printing in A.D. 981, only fifty
years after the first edition of the Confucian Canon was printed. The
Cambridge copy cannot claim to date from 981, but it does date from
1566. [26]

Another work of the same kind was the San Tsai Tu Hui,
issued in 1609, which is bound up in seventeen thick volumes. [27] It is
especially interesting for the variety of topics on which information
is given, and also because it is profusely illustrated with full-page
woodcuts. It has chapters on Geography, with maps; on Ethnology,
Language, the Arts and Sciences, and even on various forms of
Athletics, including the feats of rope-dancers and acrobats,
sword-play, boxing, wrestling, and foot-ball.

Under Tricks and Magic we see a man swallowing a sword, or walking
through fire, while hard by an acrobat is bending backward and
drinking from cups arranged upon the ground.

The chapters on Drawing are exceptionally good; they contain some
specimen landscapes of almost faultless perspective, and also clever
examples of free-hand drawing. Portrait-painting is dealt with, and
ten illustrations are given of the ten angles at which a face may be
drawn. The first shows one-tenth of the face from the right side, the
second two-tenths, and so on, waxing to full-face five-tenths; then
waning sets in on the left side, four, three, and two-tenths, until
ten-tenths shows nothing more than the back of the sitters head.

There is a well-known Chinese story which tells how a very stingy man
took a paltry sum of money to an artist  payment is always exacted
in advance  and asked him to paint his portrait. The artist at once
complied with his request, but in an hour or so, when the portrait was
finished, nothing was visible save the back of the sitters
head. What does this mean? cried the latter, indignantly.
Oh,
replied the artist, I thought a man who paid so little as you
wouldnt care to show his face!

Perhaps some one may wonder how it is possible to arrange an
encyclopædia for reference when the language in which it is written
happens to possess no alphabet.

Arrangement under Categories is the favourite method, and it is
employed in the following way: 

A number of such words as Heaven, Earth, Time, Man, Plants, Beasts,
Birds, Fishes, Minerals, and others are chosen, and the subjects are
grouped under these headings. Thus, Eclipses would come under Heaven,
Geomancy under Earth, the Passions under Man, though all
classification is not quite so simple as these specimens, and search
is often prolonged by failing to hit upon the right Category. Even
when the Category is the right one, many pages of Index have
frequently to be turned over; but once fix the reference in the Index,
and the rest is easy, the catch-word in each case being printed on the
margin of each page, just where the finger comes when turning the
pages rapidly over.

The Chinese are very fond of collections of reprints, published in
uniform editions and often extending to several hundred volumes. My
earliest acquaintance with literature is associated with such a
collection in English. It was called The Family Library, and
ran to over a hundred volumes, if I recollect rightly, and included
the works of Washington Irving and the immortal story of Rip Van
Winkle. There is also a Chinese Rip Van Winkle, a tale of a man
who, wandering one day in the mountains, came upon two boys playing
checkers; and after watching them for some time, and eating some dates
they gave him, he discovered that the handle of an axe he was carrying
had mouldered into dust. [28] Returning home, he found, as the Chinese poet
puts it,

City and suburb as of old,
But hearts that loved him long since cold.[28a]

Seven generations had passed away in the interim.

The Cambridge Library possesses several of these collections of
reprints. One of them is perhaps extra valuable because the wooden
blocks from which it was printed were destroyed during
the Tai-ping
Rebellion, some forty years ago. [29]

I may mention here, though not properly belonging to this section,
that we possess a good collection of the curious pamphlets issued by
the Tai-ping rebels. [30]

Other interesting works to be found in Division B are the Statutes of
the present dynasty, which began in 1644, [31] and even those of the
previous dynasty, the latter being an edition of 1576. [32]

Then there is the Penal Code of this dynasty, in several
editions; [33]
various collections of precedents [34]; handbooks for
magistrates [35], with
recorded decisions and illustrative cases.

A magistrate or judge in China is not expected to know anything about
law.

Attached to the office of every official who may be called upon to try
criminal cases is a law expert, to whom the judge or magistrate may
refer, when he has any doubt, in private, just as our unpaid justices
of the peace in England refer for guidance to the qualified official
attached to the court.

Before passing on to the next section, one last volume, taken at
haphazard, bears the weird title, A Record in Dark Blood[36]. This
work contains notices of eminent statesmen and others, who met violent
deaths, each accompanied by a telling illustration of the tragic
scene. Some of the incidents go far to dispose of the belief that
patriotism is quite unknown to the Chinese.

Division C is devoted to Geography and to Topography. Here stands the
Imperial Geography of the Empire, in twenty-four large
volumes, with
maps, in the edition of 1745. [37] Here, too, stand many of the
Topographies for which China is justly celebrated. Every Prefecture
and every District, or Department,  and the latter number about
fifteen hundred,  has its Topography, a kind of local history, with
all the noticeable features of the District, its bridges, temples, and
like buildings, duly described, together with biographies of all
natives of the District who have risen to distinction in any way. Each
Topography would occupy about two feet of shelf; consequently a
complete collection of all the Topographies of China, piled one upon
the other, would form a vertical column as high as the Eiffel
Tower. Yet Topography is only an outlying branch of Chinese
literature.

Division C further contains the oldest printed book in the Cambridge
University Library, and a very interesting one to boot. It is entitled
An Account of Strange Nations, and was published
between 1368 and
1398. [38] Its contents consist of short notices of about 150 nationalities
known more or less to the Chinese, and the value of these is much
enhanced by the woodcuts which accompany each notice.

Among the rest we find Koreans, Japanese, Hsiung-nu (the forefathers
of the Huns), Kitan Tartars, tribes of Central Asia, Arabs, Persians,
and even Portuguese, Jean de Montecorvino, who had been appointed
archbishop of Peking in 1308, having died there in 1330. Of course
there are a few pictures of legendary peoples, such as the Long-armed
Nation, the One-eyed Nation, the Dog-headed Nation, the Anthropophagi,

and men whose heads
Do grow beneath their shoulders.

There is also an account of Fusang, the country where grew the famous
plant which some have tried to identify with the Mexican aloe, thus
securing the discovery of America for the Chinese.

The existence of many of these nations is duly recorded by Pliny in
his Natural History, in words curiously identical with those we find in
the Chinese records.

Some strange birds and animals are given at the end of this book, the
most interesting of all being an accurate picture of the zebra, here
called the Fu-lu[39], which means Deer of
Happiness, but which
is undoubtedly a rough attempt at fara, an old Arabic term for
the wild ass. Now, the zebra being quite unknown in Asia, the puzzle
is, how the Chinese came to be so well acquainted with it at that
early date.

The condition of the book is as good as could be expected, after six
hundred years of wear and tear. Each leaf, here and there defective,
is carefully mounted on sheets of stiff paper, and all together very
few characters are really illegible, though sometimes the paper has
slipped upon the printing-block, and has thus given, in several cases,
a double outline.

Alongside of this stands the modern work of the kind,
published in
1761, with an introductory poem from the pen of the Emperor Chien
Lung. [40] It contains a much longer list of nations, including the
British, French, Spanish, Dutch, Russians, Swedes, and others, and the
illustrations  a man and woman of each country  are perfect
triumphs of the block-cutters art, the lines being inconceivably
fine.

Division D contains Poetry, Novels, and Plays. Under Poetry, in
addition to collections of the works of this or that writer, there are
numerous anthologies, to which the Chinese are very partial. The mass
of Chinese poetry is so vast, that it is hopeless for the general
reader to do much more than familiarise himself with the best
specimens of the greatest poets. It is interesting to note that all
the more extensive anthologies include a considerable number of poems
by women, some of quite a high order.

Two years ago, an eminent scientist at Cambridge said to me, Have the
Chinese anything in the nature of poetry in their language? In reply
to this, I told him of a question once put to me by a friendly
Mandarin in China: Have you foreigners got books in your honourable
country? We are apt to smile at Chinese ignorance of Western
institutions; but if we were Chinamen, the smile perhaps would
sometimes be the other way about.

Such novels as we have in our library belong entirely to what may be
called the classical school, and may from many points of view be
regarded as genuine works of art. Besides these, there is in the
market a huge quantity of fiction which appeals to the less highly
educated classes, and even to those who are absolutely unable to
read. For the latter, there are professional readers and
story-tellers, who may often be seen at some convenient point in a
Chinese town, delighting large audiences of coolies with tales of
love, and war, and heroism, and self-sacrifice. These readers do not
read the actual words of the book, which no coolie would understand,
but transpose the book-language into the colloquial as they go along.

À propos of novels, I should like just to mention one, a
romantic novel of war and adventure, based upon the History of the
Three Kingdoms[41], third century A.D., an epoch when
China was split
up under three separate sovereigns, who fought one another very much
after the style of the Wars of the Roses in English history. This
novel, a very long one, occupies perhaps the warmest corner in the
hearts of the Chinese people. They never tire of listening to its
stirring episodes, its hair-breadth escapes, its successful ruses, and
its appalling combats.

Some twelve years ago, a friend of mine [42] undertook to
translate it
into English. After writing out a complete translation,  a gigantic
task,  he rewrote the whole from beginning to end, revising every
page thoroughly. In the spring of 1900, after ten years of toil, it
was ready for the press; three months later it had been reduced to
ashes by the Boxers at Peking.

Sunt lacrymae rerum ...

Chinese plays in the acting editions may be bought singly at
street-stalls for less than a cent apiece. For the library, many good
collections have been made, and published in handsome editions.

This class of literature, however, does not stand upon a high level,
but corresponds with the low social status of the actor; and it is a
curious fact  true also of novels  that many of the best efforts
are anonymous.

Plays by women are also to be found; but I have never yet come across,
either on the stage or in literature, any of those remarkable dramas
which are supposed to run on month after month, even into years.

Division E is a very important one for students of the Chinese
language. Here we find a number of works of reference, most of which
may be characterised as indispensable, and the great majority of which
are easily procurable at the present day.

Beginning with dictionaries, we have the famous work of Hsü
Shên [43], who
died about A.D. 120. There was at that date no such thing as a Chinese
dictionary, although the language had already been for some centuries
ripe for such a production, and accordingly Hsü Shên set to work to
fill the void. He collected 9353 written characters,  presumably all
that were in existence at the time,  to which he added 1163
duplicates, i.e. various forms of writing the same character,
and then arranged them in groups under those parts which, as we have
already seen in the preceding Lecture, are indicators of the direction
in which the sense of a character is to be looked for. Thus, all
characters containing the element
犭 dog were brought
together; all those containing
艹 vegetation,
疒 disease, etc.

So far as we know, this system originated with him; and we are
therefore not surprised to find that in his hands it was on a clumsier
scale than that in vogue to-day. Hsü Shên uses no fewer than 540 of
these indicators, and even when the indicator to a character is
satisfactorily ascertained, it still remains to search through all the
characters under that particular group. Printing from movable types
would have been impossible under such a system.

In the modern standard dictionary, published in 1716, under the
direction of the Emperor Kang Hsi, there are only 214 indicators
employed, and there is a further sub-arrangement of these groups
according to the number of strokes in the other, the phonetic portion
of the character. Thus, the indicators hand, wood,
fire,
water, or whatever it may be, settle the group in which a given
character will be found, and the number of strokes in the remaining
portion will refer it to a comparatively small sub-group, from which
it can be readily picked out. For instance, 松 a fir tree will
be found under the indicator 木 tree, sub-group No. 4, because
the remaining portion 公 consists of four strokes in writing.

Good copies of this dictionary are not too easily obtained
nowadays. The Palace edition, as it is
called, is on beautifully
white paper, and is a splendid specimen of typography. [44]

A most wonderful literary feat was achieved under the direction of the
before-mentioned Emperor Kang Hsi, when a general Concordance to the
phraseology of all literature was compiled and published for general
use. Word-concordances to the Bible and to Shakespeare are generally
looked upon as no small undertakings, but what about a
phrase-concordance to all literature? Well, in 1711 this was
successfully carried out, and remains to-day as a monument of the
literary enterprise of the great Manchu-Tartar monarch with whose name
it is inseparably associated.

The term literature here means serious literature, the classics,
histories, poetry, and the works of philosophers, of recognised
authorities, and of brilliant writers generally.

It was not possible, for obvious reasons, to arrange this collection
of phrases according to the 214 indicators, as in a dictionary of
words. It is arranged according to the Tones and Rhymes.

Let me try to express all this in terms of English literature. Reading
a famous poem, I come across the lines

And every shepherd tells his tale
Under the hawthorn in the dale. [45]

Now suppose that I do not know the meaning of tells his tale. I
recollect perfectly that as a boy I thought it meant whispered the
old story into the ear of a shepherdess.. I determine to hunt it up
in the Concordance. First of all, I find out from the Dictionary, if I
do not know, to what Tone tale, always the last word of the
phrase, belongs. Under that tone will be found various groups of
words, each with a key-word which is called the Rhyme, that is to say,
a key-word with which all the words in this group rhyme. There are
only 106 of these key-words all together distributed over the Tones,
and every word in the Chinese language must rhyme with one of them.

The question of rhyme in Chinese is a curious one, and before going
any farther it may be as well to try to clear it up a little. All
Chinese poetry is in rhyme; there is no such thing as blank verse. The
Odes, collected and edited by Confucius, provide the standard
of rhyme. Any words which are found to rhyme there may be used as
rhymes anywhere else, and no others. The result is, that the number of
rhyme-groups is restricted to 106; and not only that, but of course
words which rhymed to the ear five hundred years B.C. do so no longer
in 1902. Yet such are the only authorised rhymes to be used in poetry,
and any attempt to ignore the rule would insure disastrous failure at
the public examinations.

This point may to some extent be illustrated in English. The first two
lines of the Canterbury Tales, which I will take to represent
the Odes, run thus in modern speech:

When that Aprilis with his showers sweet,
The drought of March hath pierced to the root.

No one nowadays rhymes sweet with root. Neither did
Chaucer; the two words, sote and rote, were in his days
perfect rhymes. But if we were Chinese, we should now rhyme
sweet with root, because, so to speak, Chaucer did so.

When the Tone of a word is known, it is also known in which quarter of
the whole work to look; and when the Rhyme is known, it is also known
in which part of that quarter the key-word, or rhyme, will be found.
Suppose the key-word to be gale, it might be necessary to turn
over a good many pages before finding, neatly printed in the margin,
the required word, tale. Under tale I should first of
all find phrases of two words, e.g. travellers tale,
fairy-tale; and I should have to look on until I came to groups of
three characters, e.g. old wifes tale, tells his
tale, and
so forth. Finally, under tells his tale I should still not find,
what all students would like so much, a plain explanation of what the
phrase means, but only a collection of the chief passages in
literature in which tells his tale occurs. In one of these there
would probably be some allusion to sheep, and in another to counting,
and so it would become pretty plain that when a shepherd tells his
tale, he does not whisper soft nothings into the ear of a
shepherdess, but is much more prosaically engaged in counting the
number of his sheep.

Our Cambridge copy of the Concordance is bound up in 44
thick
volumes. [46] Each volume contains on an average 840 pages, and each page
about 400 characters. This gives a sum total of about 37,000 pages,
and about 15,000,000 characters. Translated into English, this work
would be one-third as large again, 100 pages of Chinese text being
equal to about 130 of English.

In the year 1772 the enlightened Emperor Chien Lung, who then sat
upon the throne, gave orders that a descriptive Catalogue should be
prepared of the books in the Imperial Library. And in order to enhance
its literary value, his Majesty issued invitations to the leading
provincial officials to take part in the enterprise by securing and
forwarding to Peking any rare books they might be able to come across.

The scheme proved in every way successful. Many old works were rescued
from oblivion and ultimate destruction, and in 1795 a very wonderful
Catalogue was laid before the world in print. It fills twenty-six
octavo volumes [47] of about five hundred pages to each, the
works
enumerated being divided into four classes,  the Confucian Canon,
History, Philosophy, and General Literature. Under each work we have
first of all an historical sketch of its origin, with date of
publication, etc., when known; and secondly, a careful critique
dealing with its merits and defects. All together, some eight thousand
to ten thousand works are entered and examined as above, and the names
of those officials who responded to the Imperial call are always
scrupulously recorded in connection with the books they supplied.

Among many illustrated books, there is a curious volume in the Library
published about twenty-five years ago, which contains short notices of
all the Senior Classics of the Ming dynasty, A.D. 1368-1644
[48]. They number only seventy-six in all, because the
triennial examination had not then come into force; whereas during the
present dynasty, between 1644 and twenty-five years ago, a shorter
period, there have been no fewer than one hundred Senior Classics,
whose names are all duly recorded in a Supplement.

The pictures which accompany the letterpress are sometimes of quite
pathetic interest.

In one instance, the candidate, after his journey to Peking, where the
examination is held, has gone home to await the result, and is sitting
at dinner with his friends, when suddenly the much-longed-for messenger
bursts in with the astounding news. In the old days this news was
carried to all parts of the country by trained runners; nowadays the
telegraph wires do the business at a great saving of time and muscle,
with the usual sacrifice of romance.

Another student has gone home, and settled down to work again, not
daring even to hope for success; but overcome with fatigue and
anxiety, he falls asleep over his books. In the accompanying picture
we see his dream,  a thin curl, as it were of vapour, coming forth
from the top of his head and broadening out as it goes, until wide
enough to contain the representation of a man, in feature like
himself, surrounded by an admiring crowd, who acclaim him Senior
Classic. With a start the illusion is dispelled, and the dreamer
awakes to find himself famous.

To those who have followed me so far, it must, I hope, be clear that,
whatever else the Chinese may be, they are above all a literary
people. They have cultivated literature as no other people ever has
done, and they cultivate it still.

Literary merit leads to an official career, the only career worth
anything in the eyes of the Chinese nation.

From his earliest school days the Chinese boy is taught that men
without education are but horses or cows in coats and trousers, and
that success at the public examinations is the greatest prize this
world has to offer.

To be among the fortunate three hundred out of about twelve thousand
candidates, who contend once every three years for the highest degree,
is to be enrolled among the Immortals for ever; while the Senior
Classic at a final competition before the Emperor not only covers
himself, but even his remote ancestors, his native village, his
district, his prefecture, and even his province, with a glory almost
of celestial splendour.

NOTES
by C. Aylmer

[1] From China and the Chinese (New York: Columbia
University
Press, 1902). For the circumstances in which this book was produced
and the lectures on which it is based were delivered, see
The Memoirs of H.A. Giles (ed. C. Aylmer), East Asian History
No. 13-14 (1997) p. 43.

[42] Charles Henry Brewitt-Taylor (1857-1938). His
translation The Romance of the Three Kingdoms was published in 1925.

[43] 说文解字注; (清)段玉裁注; 苏州, 1815 [E 208-211 / FC.443.3-6]

[44] 御定康熙字典; (清)张玉书等编; 北京, 1716 [E 225-237 / FC.471.6-18]

[45] Milton, LAllégro, 67-68. Tells
his tale = counts his sheep, in order to find if any have gone missing
during the night. Tale is thus used in the sense of that
which is
told or counted, which was one of its meanings in Early
English: Anglo-Saxon talu, a number. In the Bible tell and
tale are frequently used in this sense, Gen. xv. 5,
Psalms xxii. 17, Exod. v. 18; and in the works of
writers nearly contemporary with Milton the words are used of the
counting of sheep. To tell a tale may also mean to relate a
story,
and the shepherds may be supposed to sit and amuse themselves with
simple narratives. But, as Milton in the previous lines refers to such
rural occupations as are suited to the early morning, and represents
each person as engaged in some ordinary duty, it seems likely that in
this line also some piece of business is meant, and not a pastime. The
morning hours are not usually those devoted to story-telling."
(A. Bell, Notes to Palgraves Golden Treasury (Vol.
II),
London: Macmillan, 1904, p. 245.)